A known barcode printer for printing on tags, labels, etc. receives, from a host processing system, a data packet and a format packet that controls a printing operation of the barcode printer. The format packet defines the various fields to be printed on the tag or label, the position of each field on the tag or label, the font type and size, as well as other attributes of the tag or label to be printed. The data packet defines the information to be printed in the various fields defined by the format packet. In order to print a job on this barcode printer, a user is typically required to create a format record and a separate data record for each field in a very cryptic printer language with each character of the respective record specifically defined in a programmer's manual. This is a time-consuming, laborious task even for a user familiar with the printer language. Further, because the creation of the format and data records is not a user-friendly operation, users with a low-level of printer language knowledge find the task difficult to accomplish.